Summer 2011 Whitepaper
This new whitepaper from Google UK's Travel team focuses on the challenges and opportunities that travel advertisers in the UK may face during the coming months. It seeks to provide useful and relevant insights as the summer booking season approaches.
Some key insights from the paper:
Political unrest, less disposable income and the good weather slowed holiday bookings
- The British public faces lower disposable income than in previous years. Third party research anticipates a £900 spending shortfall for the average UK holiday maker.
- Political unrest in North Africa and the Middle East has affected core summer holiday destinations.
- The outstanding good weather around the extended Easter holiday period resulted in a query shortfall.
Travel queries and clicks continue to grow in 2011
- Year-on-year travel queries grew 24% year to date, which almost mirrors the growth seen last year.
- Clicks on travel ads grew by 12% year to date.
High query volumes expected before bank holidays and school holidays
- Similar to 2009, this summer is likely to show a two peak seasonality occurring around end of term and the August bank holiday. Based on historic data, travel queries are expected to rise by approximately 12% before these dates.
- Year-to-date, we have seen mobile travel queries increase by an impressive 133% and clicks by 300%, 2011 vs. 2010.
- Mobile accounts for 12% of total travel search traffic in the UK.